Syria, Turkey,
Israel and a Greater Middle East Energy WarBy F. William Engdahl

October 14, 2012 "Information
Clearing House"
- On October 3, 2012 the Turkish military launched
repeated mortar shellings inside Syrian territory. The
military action, which was used by the Turkish military,
conveniently, to establish a ten-kilometer wide no-man’s
land “buffer zone” inside Syria, was in response to the
alleged killing by Syrian armed forces of several Turkish
civilians along the border. There is widespread speculation
that the one Syrian mortar that killed five Turkish
civilians well might have been fired by Turkish-backed
opposition forces intent on giving Turkey a pretext to move
militarily, in military intelligence jargon, a ‘false flag’
operation. [1]

Turkey’s Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Foreign Minister, the
inscrutable Ahmet Davutoglu, is the government’s main
architect of Turkey’s self-defeating strategy of toppling
its former ally Bashar Al-Assad in Syria. [2]

According to one report since 2006 under the government of
Islamist Sunni Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his
pro-Brotherhood AKP party, Turkey has become a new center
for the Global Muslim Brotherhood [3].
A well-informed Istanbul source relates the report that
before the last Turkish elections, Erdogan’s AKP received a
“donation” of $10 billion from the Saudi monarchy, the heart
of world jihadist Salafism under the strict fundamentalist
cloak of Wahabism [4].
Since the 1950’s when the CIA brought leading members in
exile of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to Saudi Arabia
there has been a fusion between the Saudi brand of Wahabism
and the aggressive jihadist fundamentalism of the
Brotherhood [5].

The
Turkish response to the single Syrian mortar shell, which
was met with an immediate Syrian apology for the incident,
borders on a full-scale war between two nations which until
last year were historically, culturally, economically and
even in religious terms, closest of allies.

That
war danger is ever more serious. Turkey is a full member of
NATO whose charter explicitly states, an attack against one
NATO state is an attack against all. The fact that
nuclear-armed Russia and China both have made defense of the
Syrian Bashar al-Assad regime a strategic priority puts the
specter of a World War closer than most of us would like to
imagine.

In a
December 2011 analysis of the competing forces in the
region, former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi made the following
prescient observation:

“NATO is already clandestinely
engaged in the Syrian conflict, with Turkey taking the lead
as U.S. proxy. Ankara’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu,
has openly admitted that his country is prepared to invade
as soon as there is agreement among the Western allies to do
so. The intervention would be based on humanitarian
principles, to defend the civilian population based on the
“responsibility to protect” doctrine that was invoked to
justify Libya. Turkish sources suggest that intervention
would start with creation of a buffer zone along the
Turkish-Syrian border and then be expanded. Aleppo, Syria’s
largest and most cosmopolitan city, would be the crown jewel
targeted by liberation forces.

Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at
Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian
border, delivering weapons from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s
arsenals as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional
National Council who are experienced in pitting local
volunteers against trained soldiers, a skill they acquired
confronting Gaddafi’s army. Iskenderum is also the seat of
the Free Syrian Army, the armed wing of the Syrian National
Council. French and British special forces trainers are on
the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and
U.S. Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and
intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the
fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers” [6].

Little
noted was the fact that at the same day as Turkey launched
her over-proportional response in the form of a military
attack on Syrian territory, one which was still ongoing as
of this writing, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) undertook
what was apparently an action to divert Syria’s attention
from Turkey and to create the horror scenario of a two-front
war just as Germany faced in two world wars. The IDF made a
significant troop buildup on the strategic Golan Heights
bordering the two countries, which, since Israel took it in
the 1967 war, has been an area of no tension [7].

The
unfolding new phase of direct foreign military intervention
by Turkey, supported de facto by Israel’s right-wing
Netanyahu regime, curiously enough follows to the letter a
scenario outlined by a prominent Washington neo-conservative
Think Tank, The Brookings Institution. In their March 2012
strategy white paper, Saving Syria: Assessing Options for
Regime Change, Brookings geo-political strategists laid
forth a plan to misuse so-called humanitarian concern over
civilian deaths, as in Libya in 2011, to justify an
aggressive military intervention into Syria, something not
done before this [8].

The Brookings report states
the following scenario:

Israel
could posture forces on or near the Golan Heights and, in so
doing, might divert regime forces from suppressing the
opposition. This posture may conjure fears in the Assad
regime of a multi-front war, particularly if Turkey is
willing to do the same on its border and if the Syrian
opposition is being fed a steady diet of arms and training [9].

This
seems to be precisely what is unfolding in the early days of
October 2012. The authors of the Brookings report are tied
to some of the more prominent neo-conservative warhawks
behind the Bush-Cheney war on Iraq. Their sponsor, the Saban
Center for Middle East Policy, includes current foreign
policy advisers to Republican right-wing candidate Mitt
Romney, the open favorite candidate of Israel’s Netanyahu.

The
Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy which issued
the report, is the creation of a major donation from Haim
Saban, an Israeli-American media billionaire who also owns
the huge German Pro7 media giant. Haim Saban is open about
his aim to promote specific Israeli interests with his
philanthropy. The New York Times once called Saban, “a
tireless cheerleader for Israel.” Saban told the same
newspaper in an interview in 2004, "I’m a one-issue guy
and my issue is Israel" [10]."

The
scholars at Saban as well as its board have a clear
neo-conservative and Likud party bias. They include, past or
present, Shlomo Yanai, former head of military planning,
Israel Defense Forces; Martin Indyk, former US Ambassador to
Israel and founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute
for Near East Policy (WINEP), a major Likud policy lobby in
Washington. Visiting fellows have included Avi Dicter,
former head of Israel’s Shin Bet; Yosef Kupperwasser, former
Head, Research Department, Israeli Defense Force’s
Directorate of Military Intelligence. Resident scholars also
include Bruce Riedel, a 30 year CIA Middle East expert and
Obama Afghan adviser [11];
Kenneth Pollack, another former CIA Middle East expert who
was indicted in an Israel espionage scandal when he was a
national security official with the Bush Administration [12].

Why
would Israel want to get rid of the “enemy she knows,”
Bashar al-Assad, for a regime controlled by the Muslim
Brotherhood? Then Israel’s security would seemingly be
threatened by the emergence of hard-line Muslim Brotherhood
regimes in Egypt to her south and Syria to her North,
perhaps soon also in Jordan.

The geopolitical dimension

The
significant question to be asked at this point is what could
bind Israel, Turkey, Qatar in a form of unholy alliance on
the one side, and Assad’s Syria, Iran, Russia and China on
the other side, in such deadly confrontation over the
political future of Syria? One answer is energy geopolitics.

What
has yet to be fully appreciated in geopolitical assessments
of the Middle East is the dramatically rising importance of
the control of natural gas to the future of not only Middle
East gas producing countries, but also of the EU and Eurasia
including Russia as producer and China as consumer.

Natural gas is rapidly becoming the “clean energy” of
choice to replace coal and nuclear electric generation
across the European Union, most especially since Germany’s
decision to phase out nuclear after the Fukushima disaster.
Gas is regarded as far more “environmentally friendly”
in terms of its so-called “carbon footprint.” The
only realistic way EU governments, from Germany to France to
Italy to Spain, will be able to meet EU mandated CO2
reduction targets by 2020 is a major shift to burning gas
instead of coal. Gas reduces CO2 emissions by 50-60% over
coal [13].
Given that the economic cost of using gas instead of wind or
other alternative energy forms is dramatically lower, gas is
rapidly becoming the energy of demand for the EU, the
biggest emerging gas market in the world.

Huge
gas resource discoveries in Israel, in Qatar and in Syria
combined with the emergence of the EU as the world’s
potentially largest natural gas consumer, combine to create
the seeds of the present geopolitical clash over the Assad
regime.

Syria-Iran-Iraq Gas pipeline

In
July 2011, as the NATO and Gulf states’ destabilization
operations against Assad in Syria were in full swing, the
governments of Syria, Iran and Iraq signed an historic gas
pipeline energy agreement which went largely unnoticed amid
CNN reports of the Syrian unrest. The pipeline, envisioned
to cost $10 billion and take three years to complete, would
run from the Iranian Port Assalouyeh near the South Pars gas
field in the Persian Gulf, to Damascus in Syria via Iraq
territory. Iran ultimately plans then to extend the pipeline
from Damascus to Lebanon’s Mediterranean port where it would
be delivered to EU markets. Syria would buy Iranian gas
along with a current Iraqi agreement to buy Iranian gas from
Iran’s part of South Pars field.

South
Pars, whose gas reserves lie in a huge field that is divided
between Qatar and Iran in the Gulf, is believed to be the
world’s largest single gas field [14].
De facto it would be a Shi’ite gas pipeline from Shi’ite
Iran via Shi’ite-majority Iraq onto Shi’ite-friendly Alawite
Al-Assad’s Syria.

Adding
to the geopolitical drama is the fact that the South Pars
gas find lies smack in the middle of the territorial divide
in the Persian Gulf between Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni
Salafist Qatar. Qatar also just happens to be a command hub
for the Pentagon’s US Central Command, headquarters of
United States Air Forces Central, No. 83 Expeditionary Air
Group RAF, and the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing of the USAF.
In brief Qatar, in addition to owning and hosting the
anti-Al-Assad TV station Al-Jazeera [15],
which beams anti-Syria propaganda across the Arab world,
Qatar is tightly linked to the US and NATO military presence
in the Gulf.

Qatar
apparently has other plans with their share of the South
Pars field than joining up with Iran, Syria and Iraq to pool
efforts. Qatar has no interest in the success of the
Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, which would be entirely
independent of Qatar or Turkey transit routes to the opening
EU markets. In fact it is doing everything possible to
sabotage it, up to and including arming Syria’s rag-tag “opposition”
fighters, many of them Jihadists sent in from other
countries including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Libya.

Further adding to Qatar’s determination to destroy the
Syria-Iran-Iraq gas cooperation is the discovery in August
2011 by Syrian exploration companies of a huge new gas field
in Qara near the border with Lebanon and near to the
Russian-leased Naval port of Tarsus on the Syrian
Mediterranean [16].
Any export of Syrian or Iranian gas to the EU would go
through the Russian-tied port of Tarsus. According to
informed Algerian sources, the new Syrian gas discoveries,
though the Damascus government is downplaying it, are
believed to equal or exceed those of Qatar.

As
Asia Times’ knowledgeable analyst Pepe Escobar pointed
out in a recent piece, Qatar’s scheme calls for export of
its huge gas reserves via Jordan’s Gulf of Aqaba, a country
where a Muslim Brotherhood threat to the dictatorship of the
King is also threatening. The Emir of Qatar has apparently
cut a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood in which he backs
their international expansion in return for a pact of peace
at home in Qatar. A Muslim Brotherhood regime in Jordan and
also in Syria, backed by Qatar, would change the entire
geopolitics of the world gas market suddenly and decisively
in Qatar’s favor and to the disadvantage of Russia, Syria,
Iran and Iraq [17].
That would also be a staggering negative blow to China.

As
Escobar points out, “it’s clear what Qatar is aiming at:
to kill the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline, a
deal that was clinched even as the Syria uprising was
already underway. Here we see Qatar in direct competition
with both Iran (as a producer) and Syria (as a destination),
and to a lesser extent, Iraq (as a transit country). It’s
useful to remember that Tehran and Baghdad are adamantly
against regime change in Damascus.” He adds, “if
there’s regime change in Syria - helped by the
Qatari-proposed invasion - things get much easier in
Pipelineistan terms. A more than probable Muslim Brotherhood
(MB) post-Assad regime would more than welcome a Qatari
pipeline. And that would make an extension to Turkey much
easier [18].”

The Israeli Gas dilemma

Further complicating the entire picture is the recent
discovery of huge offshore Israeli natural gas resources.

The
Tamar natural gas field off the coast of northern Israel is
expected to begin yielding gas for Israel’s use in late
2012. The game-changer was a dramatic discovery in late 2010
of an enormous natural gas field offshore of Israel in what
geologists call the Levant or Levantine Basin. In October
2010 Israel discovered a massive “super-giant” gas field
offshore in what it declares is its Exclusive Economic Zone
(EEZ) [19].

The
find is some 84 miles west of the Haifa port and three miles
deep. They named it Leviathan after the Biblical sea
monster. Three Israeli energy companies in cooperation with
the Houston Texas Noble Energy announced initial estimates
that the field contained 16 trillion cubic feet of
gas—making it the world’s biggest deep-water gas find in a
decade, adding more discredit to “peak oil” theories
that the planet is about to see dramatic and permanent
shortages of oil, gas and coal. To put the number in
perspective, that one gas field, Leviathan, would hold
enough reserves to supply Israel’s gas needs for 100 years [20].

Energy
self-sufficiency had eluded the state of Israel since its
founding in 1948. Abundant oil and gas exploration had
repeatedly been undertaken with meager result. Unlike its
energy-rich Arab neighbors, Israel seemed out of luck. Then
in 2009 Israel’s Texas exploration partner, Noble Energy,
discovered the Tamar field in the Levantine Basin some 50
miles west of Israel’s port of Haifa with an estimated 8.3
tcf (trillion cubic feet) of highest quality natural gas.
Tamar was the world’s largest gas discovery in 2009.

At the
time, total Israeli gas reserves were estimated at only 1.5
tcf. Government estimates were that Israel’s sole operating
field, Yam Tethys, which supplies about 70 percent of the
country’s natural gas, would be depleted within three years.

With
Tamar, prospects began to look considerably better. Then,
just a year after Tamar, the same consortium led by Noble
Energy struck the largest gas find in its decades-long
history at Leviathan in the same Levantine geological basin.
Present estimates are that the Leviathan field holds at
least 17 tcf of gas. Israel went from a gas famine to feast
in a matter of months [21].

Now
Israel faces a strategic and very dangerous dilemma.
Naturally Israel is none too excited to see al-Assad’s
Syria, linked to Israel’s arch foe Iran and Iraq and
Lebanon, out-compete an Israeli gas export to the EU
markets. This could explain why Israel’s Netanyahu
government has been messing inside Syria in the
anti-al-Assad forces. However, a Muslim Brotherhood rule in
Syria led by the organization around Mohammad Shaqfah would
confront Israel with far more hostile neighbors now that the
Muslim Brotherhood coup by Egypt’s President Mohamed Morsi
has put a hostile regime on Israel’s southern border.

It is
no secret that there is enmity bordering on hate between
Netanyahu and the Obama Administration. The Obama White
House and US State Department openly back the Muslim
Brotherhood regime changes in the Middle East. Hillary
Clinton’s meeting with Turkey’s Davutoglu in August this
year was reportedly aimed at pushing Turkey to escalate its
military intervention into Syria, but without direct US
support owing to US election politics of wanting to avoid
involvement in a new Middle East debacle [22].

State
Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin has been
accused by several Republican Congress Representatives of
ties to organizations controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Dalia Mogahed, Obama’s appointee to the Advisory Council on
Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also a member of
the US advisory council of the Department of Homeland
Security, is openly linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and an
open foe of Israel as well as calling for the toppling of
Syria’s al-Assad [23].
Obama’s Washington definitely seems to be backing the Muslim
Brotherhood horse in the race for control of the gas flows
of the Middle East.

And the Russian role

Washington is walking a temporary tightrope hoping to weaken
al-Assad fatally while not appearing directly involved.
Russia for its part is playing a life and death game for the
future of its most effective geopolitical lever—its role as
the leading natural gas supplier to the EU. This year
Russia’s state-owned Gazprom began delivery of Russian gas
to northern Germany via Nord Stream gas pipeline under the
Baltic Sea from a port near St. Petersburg. Strategically
vital now for the future role of Russia as an EU gas
supplier, is its ability to play a strategic role in
exploiting the new-found gas reserves of its former Cold war
client state, Syria. Moscow has long been engaged in
promoting its South Stream gas pipeline into Europe as an
alternative to the Washington Nabucco pipeline which was
designed to leave Moscow out in the cold [24].

Already Gazprom is the largest natural gas supplier to the
EU. Gazprom with Nord Stream and other lines plans to
increase its gas supply to Europe this year by 12% to 155
billion cubic meters. It now controls 25% of the total
European gas market and aims to reach 30% with completion of
South Stream and other projects.

Rainer
Seele, chairman of Germany’s Wintershall, the Gazprom
partner in Nord Stream, suggested the geopolitical thinking
behind the decision to join South Stream: "In the global
race against Asian countries for raw materials, South
Stream, like Nord Stream, will ensure access to energy
resources which are vital to our economy." But rather
than Asia, the real focus of South Stream lies to the West.
The ongoing battle between Russia’s South Stream and the
Washington-backed Nabucco is intensely geopolitical. The
winner will hold a major advantage in the future political
terrain of Europe [25].

Now a
major new option of Syria as a major source for
Russian-managed gas flows to the EU has emerged. If al-Assad
survives, Russia will be in the position as savior to play a
decisive role in developing and exploiting the Syrian gas.
Israel, where Russia also has major cards to play, could
theoretically shift to back a Russian-Syrian-Iraqi-Iran gas
consortium were Israel and Iran to reach some modus vivendi
on the nuclear and other issues, not impossible were the
political constellation in Israel to change after the coming
elections. Turkey, which is presently in a deep internal
battle between Davutoglu and President Gül on the one side
and Erdogan on the other, is dependent on Russia’s Gazprom
for some 40% of gas to its industry. Were Davutoglu and his
faction to lose, Turkey could play a far more constructive
role in the region as transit country for Syrian and Iranian
gas.

The
battle for the future control of Syria is at the heart of
this enormous geopolitical war and tug of war. Its
resolution will have enormous consequences for either world
peace or endless war and conflict and slaughter. NATO member
Turkey is playing with fire as is Qatar’s Emir, along with
Israel’s Netanyahu and NATO members France and USA. Natural
gas is the flammable ingredient that is fueling this insane
scramble for energy in the region.

[4]
The figure of $10 billion was relayed in a private
discussion with the author by a Turkish businessman and
political figure who asked to remain anonymous. Indian
diplomats, including H.E. Gajendra Singh, former Ambassador
to Ankara, have independently confirmed Saudi funding of the
Turkish AKP. Presumably like most $10 billion cash grants,
it came with heavy strings attached from Riyhad.

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